Shared Sacrifice

Now that we’re in the middle (or, probably at the beginning) of our third war, can we maybe do the things we’re supposed to do during a war? Start with a tax increase. After all, those cruise missiles and fighter jets aren’t free. If this war is worth it, (and I have my doubts) then it’s worth paying for.

Of course the people risking their lives, not to mention their health and their relations back home, are the men and women in the air and at sea, and possibly in the future on the ground. We need to make sure that when they come home, the VA is in as tip top shape as possible, and that when people come back, they have the physical health, mental health, and family support they’ve earned. We need to make sure they have jobs to come back to. Especially since so many of the people deployed are in the National Guard and Reserves, it means we need to do everything we can to make sure they can return to the lives they’ve left, sometimes two and three times. It means their jobs have to still be there for them government agencies like ESGR need support and private businesses need to be willing to hire and to go above the bare minimum required by law in retaining and supporting their service member employees.

But those of us who don’t ever suit up ought to sacrifice in other ways. We need a renewed push away from oil in the short term because that’s where Gadhafi gets his money and in the longer term because we’ve been in a hot war in the Middle East for a decade, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping. We ought to consider rationing, to force us to use less oil.

Finally, it’s not the time for business to make profit. They can return to that when our 3 wars are over. Now is not the time, as FDR said for, “that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.” We need to tell all military contractors (including Boeing) that they’ll be delivering quality products, and doing it at cost. If they don’t like it, we’ll have to nationalize the factories at least until our wars are over. Same with the extraction industries. We really ought to nationalize oil drilling. At least enough that the operations in our 3 wars aren’t dependent on corporations. If the oil companies don’t like it, well there are wars on.

If Obama had had one ounce of leadership, he would have resisted getting into a prolonged mess with a guy who is damn well know for indurance, who sits on megatons of gold and will fight till his last breath.

This is Hillary’s war, she pushed it, he caved. For all you Bush Cheney haters, you got your own hawks in power now, and they are doing the very same things you have been pissing mad about for the last 10 years.

I’m remembering Trumans Senate hearings on wartime profiteering during WWII (before he became Vice-President in Jan. 1945). He insisted that if “our boys” are being killed overseas, that military contractors should receive only minimal profits.

After all, the government was giving them guaranteed contracts, paying up front for building plants and tooling which the companies got to keep after the contracts ended, etc. Since the companies were not taking any risk, they weren’t entitled to anything more than a nominal profit.

Carl that was one of your best rants written so far and I force to agree with most of the tongue and cheek. There War’s what gives folks we built a military to fight two but three! Don’t worry the folks in the military have been in worst shape like after the abandonment of Viet Nam by Congress. Oh! What happen with the transparent White House, because Congress wants to impeach the Messiah after last week end drum roll? Well life isn’t what it appears in the New York Times or on HA! Now the Kool-Aid does taste great when you add that white stuff!

Yeah, the U.S., UK and France have interests in the region and they chose to get involved to influence the outcome. Two percent of the world’s oil production doesn’t sound like much but the world economy needs every last freaking drop until a viable substitute is implemented.

Gaddafi like Mubarak and that other bastard in Tunisia had long worn out their respective welcomes and it’s about time they joined the Papa Doc Duvalier’s of the world.

In the case of Saddam he was bottled up in Iraq to the point where Kurdistan had almost full autonomy and there was no need to blow a trillion dollars because he wore a green military uniform and fired guns in the air. WMD was a fantasy and anyone who read the UNSCOM reports like the McClatchy papers did would have known that. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to let his people “go Egypt” on him?

Well right wingers you wanted to “finish the job” that Dick Cheney in his saner days judged would be a “quagmire”. Now the trillion dollar plus bill has come due. And what a surprise – you’re still whining.

Its more of the same BS in the middle east: Hope and Pray….as in hope and pray the new crazy that takes control is slightly less wacko than the old crazy we helped depose.

You cant blame this one on Bush.

As far as the comparisons to Yugoslavia? Pfft…we should have never gone into Yugoslavia in the first place. The Europeans are more than capable of handling their own problems, they just like the US to always do the heavy lifting(and spending).

re 1: I agree with you. I remember an American president in the latter half of the 1970’s stating that we needed to get serious about alternative energy, or the Arabs would have us (teh West) by the shorthairs (I’m paraphrasing).

But then, the ‘gipper’ was elected and it was business as usual and (HAW HAW HAW!!!)what about all those chicken little democrats and their screaming about ‘alternative energy’?

We don’t get much oil from the mideast anymore anyway. So, the hell with them. Let’s use the war money on development of alternative energy.

Can anybody tell us what the master plan is for Libya?
I agree with you. Lack of an obvious exit plan, or even a plan is a very bad idea. Kucinich: Obama should be impeached over Libya action. ‎

However, unlike you and your conservative serf-bots, I question my president when I think he’s messing up. I don’t remember you and your crowd saying one peep of dissent when it’s a republican doing anything. No, you wait till it’s a democrat or a black man, and then you hold them to a different standard. Typical.

“Amount of U.S. oil consumption that comes from the Middle East: 2 mbd — 12 percent, only three percent from Iraq and Kuwait. The rest of our imported oil comes from places like Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, Algeria, Ecuador, and England.”

2. Afghan: to get rid of the Taliban and install a pro-western govt…and kill OBL.

has either plan worked? partly, but not all the way.

Fact is this thought: is better to have a plan, even if it doesnt work, than to have no plan at all.

thats the point, in case your feeble brain missed it.

03/22/2011 at 11:06 am

Niether plan worked.

Both plans were calculated failures. Iraq was invaded to give the boy king an illusery set of balls. So he could be a big man in the eyes of his Daddy. The waste, theft and corruption by Cheney and his pals in Iraq was/and is mind-blowing. (By the way…where IS that NINE BILLION DOLLARS of US taxpayers money that is unacounted for?)

The plan was to start a war, blow things up, squander the Clinton Surplus, and leave the whole mess to the next guy. You really are a simpleton aren’t you?

20 – I’ll give the bigot lobotomy the benefit of the doubt on Obama’s race – tehchickenshit troll is an old NWA and Fred Williamson fan after all..

But yeah, he’s as smelly a right wing piece of work as they come. His “both parties are slime” line is complete bullshit. Whatever disparages that which he hates, he votes for and 99.99999 percent of the time it has an “R” next to its name.

Colin Powell – what a joke. Soiled himself completely at the U.N. so he could retain Bush’s favor while Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz were stabbing him in the back the whole time. He was finished in the political realm after that debacle.

And “Old Ronald Reagan” – I love that line, the doddering speechifying fool who cut and ran from a terrorist attack in Lebanon, who traded arms for hostages with Iran which was declared a state sponsor of terrorism only months before..

We’re privileged indeed to have such a fine ambassador of the Dori Monson mindset here in the comment threads.

Carl that was one of your best rants written so far and I force to agree with most of the tongue and cheek. There War’s what gives folks we built a military to fight two but three! Don’t worry the folks in the military have been in worst shape like after the abandonment of Viet Nam by Congress. Oh! What happen with the transparent White House, because Congress wants to impeach the Messiah after last week end drum roll? Well life isn’t what it appears in the New York Times or on HA! Now the Kool-Aid does taste great when you add that white stuff!

03/22/2011 at 8:41 am

I thought the flake got kicked out of here. Must’ve been wishful thinking.

18 – You left out Saudi Arabia. We don’t live in a vacuum like our glib friend @ 1 would wish. I’m sorry we’re connected to the rest of the world in countless ways and the role we play with our military .e.g. the 5th fleet in Bahrain is part and parcel of that. It’s just plain reality. If we don’t play this role why should our trading partners be compelled to float our debt?

It’d be nice if we could produce all our own energy but guess what – even that’s unwise – it means at best fossil fuel exporting countries lose their biggest customer, and worse fall into political and economic chaos, i.e. no customers for our goods and services.

@2, 3 — Minorities, the poor, and working classes have already done their share. We should enact a draft that takes only the children of families earning over $250,000 a year — with no student or hardship deferments.

Funny how rightwingers want to start wars with everyone except fascist killers. And the war they want to start most of all is a civil war right here at home — there’s no one they’d rather kill than their fellow Americans.

@5 “If Obama had had one ounce of leadership, he would have resisted getting into a prolonged mess with a guy who is damn well know for indurance, who sits on megatons of gold and will fight till his last breath.”

“A CNN correspondent has angrily denied a Fox News report that he and other journalists were used by the Libyan government as human shields against an attack on Moammar Gadhafi’s compound.

“Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin reported Monday that the British military had to call off a mission on the Libyan ruler’s compound because journalists had been taken there …. She added that Fox correspondent Steve Harrigan avoided the government-sponsored trip because of concern about being used as a shield.

“CNN’s Nic Robertson, who was part of the CNN crew cited in the Fox story, shot back on the air Monday night, calling the allegation ‘outrageous and absolutely hypocritical.’

“‘To say it was a human shield is nuts,’ Robertson said on Wolf Blitzer’s primetime CNN show. … ‘You know, when you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from the dictatorship here. You don’t expect it from the other journalists.’ In addition, Robertson said, Fox sent a security guard with a camera on the same trip — a detail that was omitted from the Fox report.”

Why don’t all you Obama supporters read what the FED has to say about the Deficits Obama is wracking up, and on top of that chooses to add another war with lost planes and 102 million dollar + crusie missles. 14,250 trillion in deficit spending and no end in site

re 35: Some say that Fox correspondent Steve Harrigan wisely avoided the government-sponsored trip by safely holing up in the hotel lounge sipping gin-rickies and smoking Chesterfields with an orange complected man believed to have been John Boehner — who had mistakenly traveled to Libya believing it to have been a golfing junket funded by the Koch brothers.

@5 “If Obama had had one ounce of leadership, he would have resisted getting into a prolonged mess with a guy who is damn well know for indurance, who sits on megatons of gold and will fight till his last breath.”

Two words: Bush. Iraq.

Now suck my rabbit dick.

Well, Saddam only “endured” under Clinton. That is true? no? He did not last but a few days before he was removed after the international coalition, acting on UN resolution 1441, finally decided to move on his govt. He was removed quickly. As for prolonged?
Iraq has taken a LONG time…Yet, they’re now able to stand on their own, have written, voted and put in place a constitutional framework, provide for their own security and defense, and are an elected gov’t of their people…

Saddam Hussein was such a THREAT…that the so-called international coalition…Tonga? Latvia? Lithuania? DISSOLVED after 2003 leaving The US and Britain, and the Brits “cut and ran” two years ago. Hussein would have been gone anyway. Iraq was the opportunity of a lifetime to loot and pillage for Cheney and his pals and YOU and the rest of us will be paying for it for decades.

@2, 3 — Minorities, the poor, and working classes have already done their share. We should enact a draft that takes only the children of families earning over $250,000 a year — with no student or hardship deferments.

03/22/2011 at 11:49 am

Yet, our all volunteer military continues to meet/beat recruiting goals, year after year…

Kinda amazing that working class young folks are still willing to sign up considering how badly they’ve been fucked over. I keep expecting them to do like the head of the AZ state senate (R) and declare that they’re not Americans.

this 3rd war is ridiculous. so is pretending that we are not taking a lead role. no one believes that and it’s not true.
it’s a total disaster.
Qaddafi now has snipers shooting at innocent people to perpetuate fear.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201.....f/af_libya

obama getting in was stupid.
it’s even dumber for obama to telegraph no ground troops will be involved. obama is an amateur who acts like he is playing a video game. we desperately need real leadership.

and forcing business to hire military returnees in a recession? carl doesn’t have a clue how difficult things are out there, especially in our state where it is just a matter of time before we see major tax increases in the form of repealing exemptions which will lead to more business flight.

cities in Utah, Idaho, southern states etc have huge staffs of Economic Development people almost permanently in california working out plans for buisinesses to relocate. i know one of these business development pros and the next 2 states on their radar are illinois and washington. if washington repeals, their hitlist is those businesses impacted.

the far-left cannot understand that businesses have options and will not simply sit there and be fleeced. utah has specific proposals which show most businesses a 40%+ reduction in operating costs. that’s huge. it’s simple to calculate how long it will take to amortize the cost of the move. in many cases, it’s 2-3 years. that’s it!

so is pretending that we are not taking a lead role. no one believes that and it’s not true.

Why shouldn’t we? We’ve got a military sized many times larger than who knows what combined. Calling the U.S to lead means….

ding*ding*ding*

Higher chances of operational success…

Don’t look at me. Right wingers and those bamboozled by their fear mongering brought this about. You voted for it. You wanted a military this size and with this much capability. It was your eyes that teared up after watching the propaganda on Faux News..

There are already federal laws on the books requiring business to give reservists and national guardsmen their jobs back when they return, and also prohibiting employers from discriminating against former servicemen/servicewomen who might be called back again. But those laws are often violated.

I know a fellow in the researves, a skilled technition, who regularly gets called up for deployment at least once a year, for a few months at a time. Each time he returns his employer, a large employer in the area, gives him a run-around about how they’ve already given his job away, and they will try to fit him in part-time on an on-call basis, mostly nights and weekends, until something opens up. Every time he hears that, he just pulls out his cell phone, speed-dials his lawyer, simply says “yep, they’re doing it again”, and then hands the phone to whoever is feeding him that line so the lawyer can educate them on the penalties for discrimination.

Of course, they try to retaliate, usually by telling whoever they put in his position that they are getting demoted because of him, and hoping the two of them get into a fight so they can fire both of them. But he’s smarter than that.

I don’t care if it’s a rescession. If a serviceman/woman returns to civilian life after being in the military, they are entitled to their job back and preferential treatment for any host of government jobs. It’s part of the deal we made when we needed them, we can’t renig later because we don’t want to pay the price after receiving the benefits.

Why Gaddafi’s Now a Good Guy
By SCOTT MACLEOD/CAIRO Tuesday, May 16, 2006

When I called on Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi in his Bedouin tent last year, he was at pains to explain how he and President Bush were on the same wavelength. In all his years as a bad boy in the eyes of the West, he said, Libya was simply doing what Bush did when he invaded Iraq. “Bush is saying that America is fighting for the triumph of freedom,” Gaddafi said between sips of tea. “When we were supporting liberation movements in the world, we were arguing that it was for the victory of freedom. We both agree. We were fighting for the cause of freedom.”

At the time, it may have sounded like the typical ramblings of the Libyan leader. But now, a year later, Gaddafi and Bush do apparently see eye to eye. On Monday, Gaddafi accomplished one of history’s great diplomatic turnarounds when Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice announced that the U.S. was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and held up the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as “a model” for others to follow. Rice attributed the ending of the U.S.’s long break in diplomatic relations to Gaddafi’s historic decision in 2003 to dismantle weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism as well as Libya’s “excellent cooperation in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001.”

Credit where credit is due: dennis kucinich is a man of his principals – and I can respect that.

I think its pretty fair to say I dont see eye to eye with dennis the menace on many subjects – but give the man his due. he called bush out on his war and he is calling obama out on his current escapade.

props to kucinich for looking past partisanship and saying/doing what he thinks the constitution stands for
– hell, he might be of the very honest politicians out there.

Credit where credit is due: dennis kucinich is a man of his principals – and I can respect that.

I think its pretty fair to say I dont see eye to eye with dennis the menace on many subjects – but give the man his due. he called bush out on his war and he is calling obama out on his current escapade.

props to kucinich for looking past partisanship and saying/doing what he thinks the constitution stands for
– hell, he might be of the very honest politicians out there.

Pfft. It’s not a war. The Constitution says only Congress can declare war. It’s a military action sanctioned by the U.N and joined by players in the region. Obama informed Congress within the 48 hour period as specified by the War Powers Act.

Here’s some interesting words from a lefty I like to read from time to time:

But tell me this is an “attack on a Muslim nation,” that this is senseless killing of innocent civilians or that this is an unnecessary commencement of a war, then all I can say is cut the crap.

This war was begun by a monstrous dictator who has ruled, unelected and unchecked, through torture, murder and repression while he and his perverted sons have sacked their nation of billions. When civilians, or as you prefer — innocent civilians– finally rose up and said they had had enough, it was Mr. Gaddafi who initiated the war. All he did was kill innocent civilians and threaten to kill thousands more. Given that NO information from Libyan sources is reliable, the number of people this fascist has butchered in the last month are unknown. Conservative estimates are a minimum of 2,000. Opposition sources say the figure is more than 8,000.

THOSE are the innocent civilians murdered in this war — not by U.S. or U.K. or French munitions but rather by their own government.

The western military intervention, if anything, was late. Obama, understandably, was hesitant to act precisely because he was acutely aware of the damage inflicted on U.S. prestige by its intervention in Iraq. He waited as long as he could, which was probably a bit too long, but he — and the Europeans– had their hand forced this week as Gaddafi massed his armies on the outskirts of Benghazi and the mad dictator went on state TV and promised a wholesale massacre.

They’re still a sunk cost whether we use them or not. By not using them or using them and not replacing them we avoid future costs. Or some shit like that, I may not have it 100% right.

Moammar’s a human shit-stain and getting rid of him seems like a good way to get rid of some of our stockpile, which hopefully wont get rebuilt. I’m an unapologetic pragmatist and opportunist. We could get a 2fer out of this deal.

@89

HERE IS THE FACT: ALL of you leftnuts would be screaming bloody fucking murder if it was Bush who was attacking Libya. and you damn well know it.

LMFAO…so NOW, its only justified by YLB to attack another country if WE are using thier oil….if their oil is on the world market, but doesnt reach US shores, and they still kill their people, well then tough shit for their peeps then.

Obama would rather be spendin billions on his own lavish trips, then ever helping Americans who are out of work.

He and his followers are a bunch of spendomaniacs, and it is biting everyone in 0% interest on your savings, a stock market that is up and down like a roller coaster, deficits in every program and state, and now a new war lobbing billions when we were not even involved.

Obama would rather be spendin billions on his own lavish trips, then ever helping Americans who are out of work.

I’m sorry. Are you just making this up as you go along? When did facts stop mattering? It’s not Obama that has proposed cuts that will eliminate 400,000 jobs, and it’s not Democrats who’ve declared their primary purpose to be knocking Obama out of office, not helping the American people.

I hope you’re not getting paid. You are so stupid…even for a republiclown…you are so demonstrably stupid, you’ll get fired. Today.

Wait a minute sonny, I’ll throw you a bone. That yo-yo who was cock-walking around last week after presenting his bill to bust Washington public sector unions is even dumber than you are (fuck, he’s probably your hero). Go talk to him. Tell him I sent you.

Let’s just get the fuck out of the Middle East. Leave the Islamic countries to themselves. If the Europeans and Asians want to get the fuck involved in Sandnigger Land, they by my fucking guest, assholes!!

If you really want to disrupt radical Islamists, just leave them alone: they’ll start killing each other over whether or not Muhammad liked chicken better than beef or some other such nonsensical argument.

The best thing to do now is get working on a sensible alternative to oil. Continuing to involve ourselves in the affairs of Islamic nations is not a productive endeavor. In fact, it’s our bungling and blind-faith support of Israel that got us into this mess. If we took a non-interventionist stance and dealt with all countries of the Middle East at arm’s length, we’d get along a lot better and still have oil to buy. After all, nobody makes a dime off of oil until somebody else buys it.

As I’ve stated before, Islam is a religion that is stuck in the 7th Century, and there’s nothing the West can do to bring them out of that. The Islamic World is responsible for changing itself. The more we try to make them like us, the more they become entrenched in what they know: strict, unbending Islam.

115 – LMAO!! You’re as ignorant about Islam as you are about the importance of U.S. national interests. Islam is about as stuck in the 7th Century as Judaism is – which means not at all.

Sorry. Not all of Islam is as backward looking as Saudi Arabia. Not even freaking Iran.

And we had diplomatic and business relations with the Saudi Kings WAY BEFORE Israel was founded.

Sorry fool, finding a substitute for oil comes first. And that’s no easy task. The oil companies are doing everything they can to keep that from happening. So until then the oil’s gotta flow or we’re in a world of hurt and that can only mean we stay involved.

The best thing to do now is get working on a sensible alternative to oil. Continuing to involve ourselves in the affairs of Islamic nations is not a productive endeavor. In fact, it’s our bungling and blind-faith support of Israel that got us into this mess. If we took a non-interventionist stance and dealt with all countries of the Middle East at arm’s length, we’d get along a lot better and still have oil to buy. After all, nobody makes a dime off of oil until somebody else buys it.

Again…I don’t have a problem with any of the preceeding. What makes you thing I do?…or YLB for that matter. Oil companies and oil producing countries have been protected by every administration since Teddy Roosevelt. Jimmy Carter bravely tried to get us on the road to energy independence and was ridiculed by Reagan and the republicans. Maybe we should have listened to Carter.

As I’ve stated before, Islam is a religion that is stuck in the 7th Century, and there’s nothing the West can do to bring them out of that. The Islamic World is responsible for changing itself. The more we try to make them like us, the more they become entrenched in what they know: strict, unbending Islam.

You know what? That sounds exactly like the evangelical christian right in this country. There’s some dumbass megapreacher saying today that the first amandment only applies to christians. Sounds like your entrenched “stricter, unbending christianists”.

I’d say that the only children on this blog are you two.

Really. How so? You’re reasonable sometimes…not like a couple idiots here and I don’t have problems with your comments above…well too much anyway…so what’s the deal? I just can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t realize that we have a REVENUE problem and we need urgently to INVEST in America and her infrastructure. I can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t understand that it’s a dire situation that we don’t MAKE anything in the US anymore. I don’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t understand that this is a “bubble up” economy….NOT “trickle down (that means jobs, jobs, JOBS!!!). I don’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t understand that the US has become a corporate Plutocracy/kleptocracy and we need to take this country back.

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